Hi
I'm a rather new and very happy Debian user, and some time ago
while testing hamm/unstable I came trough a problem I thought deserved
some time.
I like better xinetd than inetd, so I installed. Despite of it
trying hard to xlate inetd.conf, new services added won't correctly
install into new xinetd.conf, and thus you lose consistency and have
to add them by hand (not a pain for somebody who knows what's up, but
a big pain for a newbie).
I know xinetd is non-free and not too much people uses it, but
it's *good* and secure, and it may happen sometime a new free xinetd
comes up ...
Well, what I'd like to propose is something like or
update-menus, but for network services. Then a series of update-XXX
scripts would xlate a global services database to inetd.conf,
xinetd.conf or whatever and restart the desired daemon.
My proposal'd look something like this:
/etc/services [generated]
/etc/services.d [better name?]
000-SERVICE000 [from package which provides it]
001-SERVICE001 ...
.
.
services.in [skeleton /etc/services file]
inetd.conf.in [from inetd package]
xinetd.conf.in [from xinetd package]
YOUR-DAEMON.conf.in [from YOUR-DAEMON package]
.
.
update-services [update /etc/services]
update-inetd [from inetd package]
update-xinetd [from xinetd package
update-YOUR-DAEMON [from YOUR-DAEMON package]
.
.
/sbin/update-services [calls update-* on /etc/services.d]
Each update-DAEMON script would xlate the service files to
it's daemon configuration file format by replacing a cookie in the .in
file [let's say @[EMAIL PROTECTED], installing it correctly [owner and
permissions] and saving old one in some fashion. Then it'd restart or
reload the daemon. The `update-services' program would do the same,
but actualizing /etc/services
For the service file entries: they'd be sorted using a three
number prefix in the file name and then a service name, separated with
a dash, for the sake of readability. I'd bet for allowing any kind of
chars on the name [such as spaces and stuff], though I wouldn't
recommend it.
The file would have some sort of format, I bet for something
like menufile's but with multi-line and comments and would at least
add as many fields as xinetd.conf recognizes, with option to add more
dinamically as need arises [scripts would ignore unknown fields, just
warn].
For internal services, the update-*inetd scripts just should
ignore the entries that refer to an external program and set to it's
own internal stuff.
There should be some sort of defaults. Think xinetd allows
specifying them, no idea about inetd.
So this is my idea. I'd like to hear flames/sugerences, as I'm
thinking of starting it to kill time when I'm bored of doing the rest
of things I do :)
I think it'd be a nice addition to `slink' ... what do you
think?
--
Linux-USB! http://peloncho.fis.ucm.es/~inaky/USB.html -
-
Inaky Perez Gonzalez -- PGP pubkey fingerprint -
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 8E 34 3A 62 64 99 E2 44 -
http://peloncho.fis.ucm.es/~inaky -- AD 7B 30 D9 DD FF 3E 4C -
--------------------------------- -- ----------------------- -
The loneliness of the long distance runner .....
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
